Over the next two weeks the wrestling landscape had been shaped to be one of the biggest schedules of events for this year in professional wrestling. Which has made me question, is there too much wrestling?
Just for some background, pro wrestling isn’t like a lot of sports. It’s not put together as a league, but it’s instead composed of many different promotional companies that travel around the world putting on shows for both live and television audiences. These shows happen all 52 weeks a year, so there is no off-season.
You might know some of the bigger promotions like World Wrestling Entertainment, All Elite Wrestling and Total Nonstop Action, just to name a few of the most well known ones.
There are frankly too many wrestling shows with too many wrestlers trying to tell too many different stories. How are fans supposed to consume this much content in so little time?
This week alone the WWE has five different shows, which includes its every week standing programs of “Monday Night Raw,” “NXT,” “Friday Night Smackdown!” and the additional premium live events of Bash in Berlin and NXT No Mercy 2024.
Already with shows airing on multiple days, just trying to keep up with watching them is a challenge, as all of these events will last for multiple hours each. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as other major brands have other shows.
AEWs weekly staple programs “Dynamite” and “Rampage” will have actually made a stop close to home with shows in Champaign. Coming into these shows, AEW has just gotten back from one of their biggest pay-per-views of the year, All In, which just happened last Sunday.
That’s not all from AEW, as they will also have their third show, “Collision,” on Saturday. All these shows are just to turn around and do another week of staple shows going in Sept. 7’s pay-per-view “All Out” in Chicago.
Now to get a bit more in the weeds, as of late, WWE’s developmental show “NXT” has been in a collaboration with “TNA,” having multiple stars crossover between shows, most notably when Roxanne Perez defended her NXT women’s title against TNA Knockouts Champion Jordynne Grace at “NXT Battlegrounds.”
This week on the men’s side of things, TNA wrestler Joe Hendry will be taking on NXT Men’s champion “All Ego” Ethan Page at NXT “No Mercy.” TNA will also be having their own pay-per-view event, TNA “Emergence,” on Friday.
Smaller promotions like New Japan Pro Wrestling and the Nationals Wrestling Alliance will both be having events. With New Japan having “Capital Collision” on Friday and “NWA 76” Philadelphia, it’s sure to be a packed weekend to say the least.
The first thing I learned about when I started to watch wrestling is that there is no off-season for these talents. These shows are always happening night in and night out. If you want to see wrestling, there will be wrestling to see.
It worries me for the sake of the industry if a week like this happens again and again, won’t we see a major slip in the ratings?
In financial quarter three of this year, there has already been a noticeable slip in the rating across multiple wrestling shows. AEW Collision is already down around 48,000 viewers from last quarter.
With AEW Collision being the companies newest show, its drop in viewership is interesting because it launched with an average of 706,000 viewers in quarter two of 2023. It beat out WWE’s third show NXT, which was receiving 600,000 views at the time. Now, NXT holds roughly a 225,000 view lead over Collision.
Having multi hour events happening on the same day makes it hard for viewers to engage in the world, along with trying to live their own lives. We have already seen a dip in Collision viewers.
With this show airing on Saturdays and with WWE’s main premium live event day being on Saturdays, it is understandable that fans have to pick and choose what to watch to have more time in these days.
Wrestling fatigue personally comes and goes. It’s hard as a fan to have the time to watch everything along with processing to understand how we are getting the in-ring matchups we are getting, based on storylines sometimes years in the making.
Hopefully this week’s onslaught of 13 shows – and those are just the ones mentioned in this article– won’t burn out the masses too much. There is so much still left of 2024.
As for me, I was in attendance for AEW “Dynamite” and “Rampage” in Champaign, along with plans to tune into Bash in Berlin and NXT No Mercy. For as excited I am for the matchups for AEW “All In”, I will probably miss it. Just the thought of all the different events that are going to play out has already gotten my mind drained.
Post pay-per-view wrestling fatigue is real in the community, and if these shows don’t land with high notes to pull me back in, it might be time to take a little break from wrestling.
Gunnar Olson can be reached at 581-2812 or deneic@gmail.com.
